Urban Cultures (U03229)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 10 ? Acronym : GEO-3-URBCULT

This course offers undergraduate students an introduction to cultural geographical approaches to the city. The course considers a range of empirical examples and theoretical questions relevant to understanding modern cities and contemporary urban experiences. Through the example of the city, students will become familiar with some key themes in contemporary cultural geography, such as consumption, difference, representation, memory and materiality. More specifically, their cultural geographical encounter with the city will examine the following themes: cities and modernity; utopianism and its others; cities of spectacle; cities and difference; cultures of urban activism; and spectral cities. The material will be delivered drawing on key thinkers in urban studies (past and present), examples from a number of First and Third World cities, a plethora of urban experiences (from walking, to graffiti, to hauntings), as well as a range of representational media (academic texts, scientific diagrams, documentary and journalistic writings, films, music and literature).

Entry Requirements

none

Subject Areas

Home subject area

Geography, (School of GeoSciences, Schedule N)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : 3rd year

? Delivery Period : Semester 2 (Blocks 3-4)

? Contact Teaching Time : 2 hour(s) per week for 10 weeks

First Class Information

Date	Start	End	Room	Area	Additional Information
07/01/2008	14:00	15:50	Room 3.18, Old Infirmary (Geography)	Central

All of the following classes

Type	Day	Start	End	Area
Lecture	Monday	14:00	15:50	Central

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

Students who complete this course will:
- Understand the distinctive theoretical and methodological approach of cultural geography
- Understand what is meant by modernity and the role 'the city' plays in understandings of modernity
- Understand a range of urban experiences and the ways they have been theorised and researched
- Understand the recursive relationship between how we theorise and represent the city and how the city is known and experienced
- Understand a range of radical and non-normative engagements with urban space
- Understand the way the concept of 'culture' is used in urban theory and planning, past and present
- Develop skills in reading and synthesising key urban texts and relating them to other relevant literatures
- Develop skills in the oral and written presentation of ideas